Copyright legislation: A look forward and a look back

Here's a look ahead at copyright and the new Congress by William Patry:

A New Congress, a New Act?

Today begins the new Congress with new committee and subcommittee chairs. In the House, Howard Berman takes the reins as chair of the IP subcommittee. In the Senate, the subcommittee has been folded back into the full Committee, chaired by Senator Leahy. [To continue, see The Patry Copyright Blog 1/4/07]

And here's a look back at the 109th Congress, copyright and libraries, from ALA:

109th Congress: Year-End Status, December 2006

The 109th Congress considered but did not complete action on the following bills. We anticipate that we will see most of the bills reintroduced in the 110th Congress.

"Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act of 2005" (DMCRA) (H.R. 1201)
This “fair use” bill was aimed at, among other things, amending Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to allow bypassing a technological lock that controls access to and use of a copyrighted work - if the circumvention does not result in infringement of the work.

"Orphan Works"
The House of Representatives’ Orphan Works bill would have amended the Copyright Act to allow use of copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to find.  The thrust of the bill is that remedies for infringement of a copyrighted work would be limited if the user (the alleged infringer) had made a reasonably diligent, good faith search to locate the owner of the work but was unable to find the owner.  Libraries are very supportive of legislation to address this problem.

"Broadcast Flag"
S. 2686, the large and complex Communications Act of 2006, included a “Digital Content Protection Act” to give the FCC authority to reissue its rule to require that all digital electronic devices, such as TV sets and personal computers, include code (known as the "broadcast flag") that accompanies digital TV signals to prevent redistribution of the digital content over the Internet.  There was ambiguous language in the broadcast flag provision about exceptions for educational and other uses along the lines of fair, thus we were not disappointed when the larger bill failed to be acted upon.

Government Information/Open Access to Research
A Senate bill, S. 2695, the “Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006," would require Internet access to articles reporting on federally funded research.  We expect to see the bill reintroduced in the Senate as well as a House version introduced in the 110th Congress.  [To continue, see copyright agenda  1/07]

Comments

[Find Legislation]

Check out Fed. SB256

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